The Pistoia Alliance has partnered with CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specialising in scientific information solutions, to further develop the Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library (CSL).
The CSL captures, stores and shares hazardous reaction information to improve laboratory safety, and currently has over 1,000 registered users from industry, academia and government. It was launched by the Alliance in 2017 as a prototype, having been funded by major pharma companies; Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Roche.
This new partnership looks to expand the reach of the CSL to help further improve lab safety and reduce hazardous reaction incidents. The Chemical Safety Library provides a repository for scientists to capture and confidentially share hazardous reaction information based on their experiences in the laboratory, with the goal of improving safety and reducing incidents across the chemical enterprise. By leveraging CAS information management capabilities, the collaboration seeks to grow this critical safety resource.
The Pistoia Alliance engaged with CAS to manage the Chemical Safety Library because of CAS’s unique scientific information management expertise and technology capabilities. With over a century of experience building and managing high-quality scientific databases, including the largest available curated collection of published chemical reactions, CAS is a respected authority in the chemistry space, providing confidence that this critical data can be shared confidentially and deposited and accessed efficiently.
“The safety of employees and researchers is a top priority at Bristol Myers Squibb,” said Alastair Binnie, Vice President, IT for R&D at Bristol Myers Squibb. “Based on an initial project designed to eliminate repeat incidents and increase safety at Bristol Myers Squibb, Chemical Safety Library has grown to become an important safety resource for the entire global research community thanks to the stewardship of the Pistoia Alliance and its members. We look forward to seeing this important industry database continue to grow and thrive under the management of CAS.”
CAS and Pistoia Alliance are tackling this effort because they believe that openly sharing critical safety data can make the entire chemical community safer.
“Information sharing has no greater purpose than ensuring the safety of the researchers doing the critical work of innovation,” said CAS President Manuel Guzman. “We look forward to partnering with Pistoia Alliance and the wider chemical community to grow and enhance the Chemical Safety Library, ensuring every organization can confidently and efficiently contribute to and use this critical resource.” Under this agreement, the Chemical Safety Library will continue to be a free resource for the entire chemical community, enhanced with a new deposition and search interface developed by CAS.
The hazard information that is being collected for the Chemical Safety Library is freely available to the public and is also uploaded to PubChem, an open chemistry database sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, for additional accessibility. Anyone can contribute reaction incident information to the database, which will be overseen by an advisory panel made up of CAS, ACS, Pistoia Alliance management and member companies, as well as outside experts.
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